I love PC gaming, but the "problem" is that I enjoy games on the keyboard and mouse too damned much. I bought the GTA 3 and Vice City a few weeks ago (yes, I am behind the times) because they were only about four dollars a piece (PS2 version) at my local game store... man, they sucked me in, even on the console. I can't imagine how badly I'd be addicted to a PC version of either one.

I love PC gaming, but the "problem" is that I enjoy games on the keyboard and mouse too damned much. I bought the GTA 3 and Vice City a few weeks ago (yes, I am behind the times) because they were only about four dollars a piece (PS2 version) at my local game store... man, they sucked me in, even on the console. I can't imagine how badly I'd be addicted to a PC version of either one.

I bought a gamepad for playing the GTA games on my PC. It works great.

wow, there is something screwy going on at pirate bay. The other day somebody uploaded GTAIV without the crack. well since then there have been at least a hundred fake cracks put up since then. Most were taken down, none worked... until one was posted earlier tonight that worked perfectly. It stayed up for 22 minutes and pirate bay yanked it. What confuses me is that they left up the fake cracks. I wonder if they are being paid off by rockstar.

Well, I did get GTA4/PC to run in 1280x1024 with my existing card by just reducing one of the settings and cranking some of the others up. Frame rate went up too. Looks a bit better overall.

But, my GTA4/PC problem is now that I can't sign into Games For Windows Live. For some stupid reason, you have to do that to even save your progress in single player (yeah, makes no sense to me either), so while the game looks OK, I can't exactly save my progress, so it's useless :p

I even ran Wireshark on it to sniff the traffic, and I do see successful authentication (bidirectional Kerberos 5 traffic), then the game starts sending UDP packets out and gets no response (and the firewall isn't dropping anything). Strangely, the outbound packets are fragmented, which I suspect Microsoft is dropping. Can't figure out why they're fragmented, 'cause after reassembly the payload is still only 1366 bytes. Odd.

Mike:Well, I did get GTA4/PC to run in 1280x1024 with my existing card by just reducing one of the settings and cranking some of the others up. Frame rate went up too. Looks a bit better overall.

But, my GTA4/PC problem is now that I can't sign into Games For Windows Live. For some stupid reason, you have to do that to even save your progress in single player (yeah, makes no sense to me either), so while the game looks OK, I can't exactly save my progress, so it's useless :p

I even ran Wireshark on it to sniff the traffic, and I do see successful authentication (bidirectional Kerberos 5 traffic), then the game starts sending UDP packets out and gets no response (and the firewall isn't dropping anything). Strangely, the outbound packets are fragmented, which I suspect Microsoft is dropping. Can't figure out why they're fragmented, 'cause after reassembly the payload is still only 1366 bytes. Odd.

I have the account already (I just re-used my MSN Messenger login)... I can sign in on the web or using gfwlclient.exe in \program files\microsoft games for windows - live\client.But those all use HTTP or HTTPS to talk to the server. The game's using UDP port 3704 and that's what's stalling out.

A power outage did something wonky to my computer. Despite being behind a surge protector, my motherboard and graphics card no longer function. My computer is 8 years old, so it's time for an upgrade anyways.

This is my first time building a computer from scratch, so I wanted to make sure I was doing it right.

Hard Drives:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136074WD Caviar. 320gb, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0gb/sI'm going to buy two HDs. One for softwware, one for data. The idea being that reformatting, organizing, backing up, and defragging should be easier. With most of the drive access being done on the software side of things, the chance of HD failure causing data loss will hopefully drop significantly.

Other concerns:Should I get new processor fan? The one I'm getting comes with one but I dunno if it wiould be inferior to a zalman.I'd like this computer to be able to last me for another 7-8 years. I think in the future I might take advantage of SLI and a new power supply, as well as 4 more gigs of ram. Does anyone see any significant bottlenecks that could also hurt me in the long run?

This Is Bold Text:WD Caviar. 320gb, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0gb/sI'm going to buy two HDs. One for softwware, one for data. The idea being that reformatting, organizing, backing up, and defragging should be easier. With most of the drive access being done on the software side of things, the chance of HD failure causing data loss will hopefully drop significantly.

Stick with one hard drive, albeit a larger one. Two hard drives double your chances of failure. I'd also recommend a Seagate. WD drives ain't what the used to be and Seagate's warranty is 5 years, not 3 like WD. If you are really concerned with data integrity go with a raid 1 setup.

Get two identical-sized drives (not necessarily identical brand) and mirror them (raid 1). Hard drives will fail eventually, mirroring will help you keep your data when it happens. When one dies, you can continue running with the one remaining drive until you can swap the dead one for another.

Don't stripe them (raid 0) and don't use one for data and one for software. Either of those means losing either all or half your data in a crash, and in the raid 0 case you can't continue running with just one drive.

I'll second the Seagate recommendation, though definitely avoid their budget Maxtor brand. All brands have their bad years though, even Seagate, Hitachi, and WD.

Oh, and that vidcard is gonna need 6-pin, not 4-pin, extra power plugs, probably two of them. Any new Antec PSU will be fine w/ that. Get one with removable power connectors at the PSU end though, less clutter inside the case that way.

Zalman makes good CPU fans but they're unnecessary on the 45nm CPU's. The stock fan is just fine. The only advantage to the Zalmans are they're easier to install/remove -- I hate the Intel LGA775 clip mechanism with a passion. I may just be too stupid to do it right tho, wouldn't be the first time :)

If you're future-proofing you may want a DDR3-based board instead of DDR2 and something that can go to at least 8 GB memory (since you're gonna be running 64-bit). I tend to go with Asus and Intel boards in desktops and Supermicro in servers, though I do have a little Shuttle SX38P2 on my desk nowadays. Biostar's probably OK but not zOMGgreat. Gigabyte and Tyan are kinda on my shiatlist. Some nVidia motherboard chipsets have a history of bizarre SATA data corruption problems; consider sticking to Intel chipsets even though that often rules out SLI.

Go with ECC memory if the board's chipset supports it (most ignore the ECC bits)

550W may be OK but 620W would be a bit better. Not much price difference.

Mike:Get two identical-sized drives (not necessarily identical brand) and mirror them (raid 1). Hard drives will fail eventually, mirroring will help you keep your data when it happens. When one dies, you can continue running with the one remaining drive until you can swap the dead one for another.

Don't stripe them (raid 0) and don't use one for data and one for software. Either of those means losing either all or half your data in a crash, and in the raid 0 case you can't continue running with just one drive.

I'll second the Seagate recommendation, though definitely avoid their budget Maxtor brand. All brands have their bad years though, even Seagate, Hitachi, and WD.

Oh, and that vidcard is gonna need 6-pin, not 4-pin, extra power plugs, probably two of them. Any new Antec PSU will be fine w/ that. Get one with removable power connectors at the PSU end though, less clutter inside the case that way.

Fixed my farking GTA4 not being able to sign into Games For Windows Live. Sure nuff it was the UDP packets being fragemented that was the problem. Cisco's VPN client reduces the IP MTU from 1500 to 1300. Even better, it doesn't change it back when you uninstall it. Once I uninstalled it and regedited the MTU back to 1500, poof, works fine now.

Maddogjew:There are flash ads on Fark? I guess I have been spared them because of adblock. Perhaps you should try it.

Listen, I know all about f*cking adblock. I don't need a lecture about blocking sh*t. I'm just not using Firefox all the f*cking time, and I'm just wondering if this is a problem for anyone else, or with this computer.

Never underestimate the nature of a nerd to be smug motherfarker when asking a simple question. It's why we're known as people persons.

//had to stop myself from saying "What ads?" too//though I'm surprised I haven't heard "Use Farkback" yet.//On second thought, don't use farkback to report the ad, post in Fark Forum instead. They like it when you do that there.

FuturePastNow:Listen, I know all about f*cking adblock. I don't need a lecture about blocking sh*t. I'm just not using Firefox all the f*cking time, and I'm just wondering if this is a problem for anyone else, or with this computer.